Five minutes, and nothing to install. Your licence covers the whole catalogue — every family, every size, every format — with no limit on how much you download.
Go to cadsymbols.com and choose Sign in. Paste the key from your purchase email — it looks like this:
CSSEN-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
There is no account and no password. The key is the login, so keep the email; you will need it again on another computer.
Search by what it is — hex bolt, flange DN100,
ball bearing — or by its standard number, DIN 933,
ISO 4014, ANSI B18.2.1. Searching the standard is
usually faster when you know it, because one standard is one family and the
sizes come from its own table.
If you would rather browse, Libraries lists everything by discipline: fasteners, bearings, piping, steel sections, electrical, hydraulics, safety signs and the rest.
Most parts are not a single model — they are a family with a table behind them. Pick the thread, the diameter, the length, the pressure rating, and the drawing redraws as you change it.
The choices come from the standard itself, so you can only build sizes that really exist. Where one choice narrows another — a bolt length that only comes in certain diameters — the list updates to match.
A part usually has several: a plan, elevations, sections, and for many families a 3D solid. Take the one you actually need — a 2D symbol for a schematic, the solid for an assembly. The view you are looking at is the one that gets exported.
Download writes a file in whichever of the fifteen formats you pick.
Insert opens it directly in the CAD application you already have running — see overleaf.
If you are unsure, the short answer is DXF for a 2D symbol and STEP for a 3D solid. Both are read by essentially every CAD application in use.
| For | Use | |
|---|---|---|
| DXF, DWG | 2D drawings and symbols | the safe default |
| STEP, IGES | 3D solids, any CAD | the safe default |
| SAT | 3D solids, ACIS-based CAD | TurboCAD, AutoCAD |
| VRML | 3D for visualisation | not for machining |
| SVG, DWF | drawings for documents and the web | |
| PNG, JPG, TIF, BMP, TGA, PCX | pictures | for a report, not a drawing |
| XML | the part's own data | dimensions, not geometry |
The CADsymbols Bridge is a small program for Windows — one file, about 20 KB, no installer and no administrator rights. With it in place, Insert in the catalogue opens the part in the CAD application you are already using, instead of leaving you a file to go and find.
Download it from cadsymbols.com/bridge, or from the dialog the first time you press Insert. Run it once; that is the whole setup. It finds what you have installed, and if there is more than one it asks you once and remembers.
It works with TurboCAD, DoubleCAD, DesignCAD, AutoCAD, Inventor, SolidWorks, CATIA, Solid Edge, Creo, IntelliCAD, Vectorworks, MegaCAD, HiCAD and TopSolid. If your application is already open, the part opens in that window rather than starting a second copy.
One licence, one person, the whole catalogue. It runs for the term you bought. A one-time purchase does not renew on its own and nothing is charged automatically; we email you before it ends so you can decide. If you chose auto-renew for the annual plan at checkout, it renews each year until you cancel by emailing [email protected].
Signing in on a new computer needs the same key, so keep the purchase email. If you lose it, get in touch and we will send it again.